Let's open our Bibles again to
Isaiah chapter 41. The subject of this chapter is
fear not. Twice the prophet says in this
chapter, fear not. And other times he says, fear
thou not. This is a message for somebody
in particular, fear thou not. After reading this chapter, and
I hope after hearing this message, you'll understand that the child
of God has no reason to fear. You have no reason to fear because
of who your God is. When God says, fear thou not,
he always says after that, because I, don't you fear because I'll
do this. Don't you fear because of who
I am. So the title of the message is divine election removes fear. Fear not. Isaiah 41, verse one. Keep silence before me, O islands,
and let the people renew their strength. Let them come near,
then let them speak. Let us come near together to
judgment. A judge of all the earth has come to speak. He's come to speak to us. And
we're told, now you shut up and listen. This is the judge coming. This is the king coming. You
just be quiet and listen. First thing we do when the judge
comes into the courtroom is you sit up straight and you be quiet. You keep silent before him. The
Almighty has come to hold audience with us and he's going to speak
first. We're going to be silent until
he speaks. But this is astounding. God says,
hold your peace, be silent before me. and let the people gather
their strength. Let the people get their arguments
together. Let them get their case together to bring before
me. Get all of your evidence together and then you come present
it to me. You come and present your evidence
and then this matter between us is going to be decided. This
matter of how your sin is going to be paid for is going to be
decided. This is what we're going to judge. Now you've heard many times God
will meet us on the grounds that we choose to come to him on.
If we choose to come to him on the ground of what we've produced,
like Cain did. Cain brought the fruit of the
ground. He brought what he produced. If you want to come to God on
that ground, he'll meet you on that ground. And like Cain, you'll
be damned. And if you want to approach God
on the ground of the sacrifice of Christ, like Abel did, he
brought the blood of the Lamb. If you want to come and plead
your case for the blood of the Lamb, God will meet you on that
ground too. And like Abel, you'll be saved.
But now being completely honest, the thought of appearing before
God the judge strikes fear into the heart of all men. Even believers
it does. And it strikes fear in our heart
because of the character of God and the character of ourselves,
what we know ourselves to be. And this fear is the result of
sin. Adam in the garden was never
afraid of anything until he sinned. And after Adam sinned, he's afraid
of everything. And we've got his nature. Sin
is alive and well in every believer. The child of God has been saved
from all sin. But now that nature of sin that we are born with,
it's alive and well in every believer. So even believers who
have no reason to fear often find themselves full of fear.
Do you find yourself in that situation? King David did. David feared Saul, even though
he was completely unafraid to go face Goliath without any armor,
just a couple of stones and a slingshot. But he became afraid of Saul.
Elijah feared Jezebel, even though he had no fear to stand before
all those false prophets by himself. Yet the thought of this woman's
coming after him scared him to death. Peter shook in his boots
at this young woman. Yet just before that, he was
not afraid to take on that whole mob, come with staves and torches
and everything, with just his fisher's knife. Yet, this young
woman comes up here and says, you're one of them, and he's
full of fear. Reminds you of anybody? We're cut from the same cloth,
and we fear so many things, even though we know God's on the throne. We fear what kind of world our
children and grandchildren are gonna live in, even though we
know God's on the throne. We know God's on the throne,
yet we fear pain, suffering, we fear sorrow and loss. We know
God's on the throne, we know his name is Jehovah-Jireh, the
Lord will provide, but boy, we fear the economy, don't we? We
fear the depression's coming, we're gonna lose our job, we'll
lose all of our visible means of support, we're frightened.
And even though we know, now I'm talking about to believers
now, this only applies to God's elect, even though we know Christ
has taken our sin away from us. He separated us from our sin
as far as east is from the west. Yet the believer still feels
some sense of fear. It's standing before God. And
that fear comes from the sin that's left in us. Now, if you
would come before God in Christ, if you'd come before him, he
calls you now to his throne. He says, you come near. Let's
judge this man. Let's decide it. If you'd come
before God in Christ, begging for mercy for Christ's sake,
I've got some words of comfort for you. Look here at verse two.
Who raised up the righteous man from the east, called him to
his foot, gave the nations before him and made him rule over kings.
He gave them as the dust to his sword and as driven stubble to
his bow. He pursued them and passed safely,
even by the way that he had not gone with his feet. Now there's
some debate among the commentators about who this man is referring
to here that's been raised up from the east. I think it's two
men because scripture is often bifocal. I think it refers to
two men. First, this man's Abraham. It
must refer to Abraham. God called Abraham from the east,
or the Chaldeans was to the east across the Arabian desert. We
know from reading scripture that God made Abraham a righteous
man. Abraham was made righteous by
faith. And God called Abraham to his foot. He said here, this
man, he called him to his foot. And what that means is he called
him to follow God. God came to Abram and he said,
Abram, get out of this place. You leave your father's house
and go to a land I'll show you. And Abraham was called to God's
foot, following him for the rest of his life. And God made Abraham
rule over kings and destroy enemies. What that is referring to, you
remember the slaughter of the kings. Those kings came and took
Lot captive and all those people captive. And Abraham took just
those few men and went Destroyed them all. Killed them all. Rescued
his nephew and all that they had. And he slaughtered them.
Rescued them all. And after he slaughtered all
those wicked kings is when Abraham met Melchizedek, the pre-incarnate
appearance of Christ. God just gave him all that. Those
enemies were just stubble to him. Well, now here's the believer's
comfort. You're wondering, okay, well,
God did to Abraham. How does that affect me? Well,
God elected a people. Just like he did Abraham, God
chose a people. And what God did for Abraham,
God's gonna do for all of his elect people. Look down here
at verse nine. Thou whom I have taken from the ends of the earth,
and called thee from the chief men thereof, and said unto thee,
thou art my servant, I've chosen thee, and not cast thee away.
See what God did for Abraham, he's gonna do for all of his
elect. God's gonna call his people from a far country. They're born
far off from Him. He's going to call them near
to Him. And He's going to make them righteous in Christ. He's
going to give them faith in Christ, just like He did Abraham. God's
going to call His people wherever it is they might be found. God's
going to call them to His foot. They're going to follow Christ.
They're going to come and they're going to follow Christ. And they're
going to rule over their enemies. That's God's promise to His people. That's our comfort. Now fear
not. And if you're a believer, if
you are someone who God has given faith in Christ, you're not gonna
come stand before God in anything you've done. You're gonna come
stand in Christ. Look at verse four. Who hath
wrought and done it? Calling the generations from
the beginning. I the Lord, the first and with the last. I am he. Now, who's wrought these
things? Who's wrought your righteousness?
Who worked out your righteousness? Well, if God wrought it, you've
got nothing to fear because Christ worked out a perfect righteousness.
If Christ wrought your righteousness, you have no fear because you're
perfectly righteous. Who wrought your salvation? We'll
see this in just a moment. Now, if you saved yourself, you
got reason for fear. But if God wrought your salvation,
if God himself worked out all your salvation, then you've got
nothing to fear. Your salvation is perfect and
eternal. God elected a people. God brought
everything for them, and God's the one who calls those people
to himself. God's the one from the beginning who's called his
people. He called the first one, and he'll call the last one.
I like what he says here at the end. I, the Lord, the first,
and he doesn't say I'm the first and the last. He says I'm the
first and with the last. The Lord's with his people. He
called the first one, he was with the first one, And whoever
the last one is, God's going to be with them. The Lord Jesus
Christ is going to be with them. See, this matter of salvation
in Christ, it's all Christ. From beginning to end, everything
in between, it's all of Christ. Christ is the beginning and the
ending. He's Alpha and Omega. He's the first and He's the last. The only message we have is Christ.
If He's the first and last and everything in between, He's our
only message. You know, you can't even spell
any spiritual truth without Christ. Alpha, that's the first letter
of the Greek alphabet. Omega is the last. Christ is
the first letter and he's the last letter and all those letters
in between. Christ is all the letters of
God's gospel, the alphabet of grace. You can't even spell grace
without Christ. You can't even spell forgiveness
without Christ. You can't spell any spiritual
truth without Christ. He's all the alphabet of God's
grace. I want you to look at 2 Thessalonians
2. This is the way that God calls
out his people. It's through the preaching of
Christ, through the message of Christ. This is how God calls
out his people. God elected them, he wrought
everything for them, but now he's gonna call them out. and
he's going to call them out by the preaching of Christ. 2 Thessalonians
2 verse 13. But we're bound to give thank
always to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, because
God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification
of the spirit and belief of the truth, whereunto he called you,
how? By our gospel, through the obtaining
of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. God does not call out
his people by clever sayings that we make up. Somebody must
be rich making up these cute sayings they put on these church
bulletin boards. I mean, good grief. But that's
not how God calls out his people, not through these cute sayings.
God doesn't call out his people by how well we can wrap up the
gospel in a nice tidy package and make it appealing to people.
God calls out his people by the simple preaching of Christ. Just
so simple. Just keep preaching Christ. And
we wonder, maybe even fear sometimes. Will God call out our children?
Will God be merciful and save our children? Really? We wonder
that. But I tell you what, the only
way to find out is keep preaching Christ to them. Because this
is the means that God uses to call out his people. And if God
calls out our children through preaching the gospel and gives
them faith, he's going to do for them exactly what he did
for Abraham. Chose him, he wrought everything
for him and he called him to his foot. So this first man called
from the east, this righteous man is Abraham. But the second
man this is talking about in verses two and three is a man
named Cyrus. Now you remember back in chapter
39, God told Israel after the death of Hezekiah, you're going
to go into captivity in Babylon. And then immediately after he
told them that, God gave Isaiah this great message of comfort
to God's people, Isaiah chapter 40. Well, chapter 41 is still
part of this message of comfort. This is a message of comfort
to every believer who's in a time of trial. God has a set time
for this trial to begin. It won't come upon you accidentally
or, you know, because something's out of control, God has a set
time for the trial of His people to begin. And He has a set time
for it to end, too. A set time. It won't go one second
further than God's eternal purpose. You're not gonna do something
wrong to cause the trial to continue. No, God's got a set time for
it to begin and a set time for it to end. And these times are
set by the God who already says He loves you. He chose you, elected
you in Christ. He wrought everything for you.
He called you to His foot. He made you righteous. That's
the one who's in control of this thing now. It's your God. And
this is what Cyrus refers to. Long time before you go into
the trial. I mean a long time. Way back
in eternity. God already appointed the means
that he's going to use to deliver you. God gave this prophecy that
Israel is going to go into captivity in Babylon, but he gave another
prophecy. He gave a prophecy that a king
named Cyrus is going to be the one who's going to get it in
his head one day to go deliver Israel from their bondage in
Babylon. God's going to equip him. God's going to give him
just, he's going to call him from the East and God's going
to enable him to conquer every enemy. Cyrus conquered much of
the known world. He defeated every enemy ever
came against. You know, when God gave this
prophecy, Cyrus is going to deliver Israel. A hundred years before
Cyrus was even born. That's when God gave this prophecy.
A hundred years before Cyrus was even born, God said, Cyrus
is going to serve me. I'm going to call him to my foot.
I'm going to use him to accomplish my purpose, to deliver my people
at my set time. God already had the means of
deliverance set before the trial even began. Now can it be more obvious that
any child of God, you've got nothing to fear. You have nothing
to fear. What trial are you in God can't
deliver you from? Come on now, what trial are you
in God can't deliver you from? Then what do you have to fear?
You have nothing to fear if you're a child of God, if you're in
Christ. And you know, the gospel of Christ, this gospel of salvation
from sin in our Lord Jesus Christ is so great. The whole earth
has heard it. The whole earth has heard his
name. Look at verse five. The isle saw it and feared. The
ends of the earth were afraid. Drew near and came. Now at this
time, everybody heard Abraham. Later on, everybody heard what
God did to Egypt when he brought Israel out from there. And that
what Rahab, we looked at that son, he told those spies, we've
all heard of you. We've heard what your God did
to Egypt. We heard what your God did to the two kings. We've
heard this thing. God didn't do anything in a corner.
Everyone has heard of Jesus Christ. His name is heard everywhere. The Pharisee said, We're trying
to squash this guy and we can't do anything with him. We can't
do anything to prevail against him. No matter how hard we try
to squash him, this thing just keeps spreading everywhere. The
whole world's gone after him, they said. Well, when the natural
man hears the name Jesus Christ, when he hears the gospel of righteousness
in Christ, When the natural man hears the gospel, God elected
a people into salvation. And God's gonna call those people
to himself through the preaching of Christ. And when the natural
man hears, we're fallen in sin, we're lost in Adam. But the righteousness
comes not by our deeds to the law, but by Christ working for
us as our substitute, his imputed righteousness given to us. When
the natural man hears it, Righteousness is in Christ. Not in all these
religious ceremonies we do makes us feel so much better. No, they're
in Christ. When men here, God loves sinners. God doesn't love everybody. God
loves sinners. Christ, he loves his people.
He loves his elect. Christ came to die for his people,
the people that God gave him. Christ didn't come to give everybody
a chance to be saved. Christ came to save his people
from their sin. And he did it. His blood washed
him white as snow. When the natural man hears that,
what do they do? Do they give thanks? Do they
say, oh, that's the best news I ever heard? No, they don't.
Do they say, I don't have any hope. The only hope I have is
God being merciful. Do they fall at God's feet and
begging for mercy? No, they don't. Do they say there's nothing they
can do to save themselves and beg God to show mercy? No. I
tell you what a natural man does when he hears these things, when
he hears the name of Jesus Christ. He rebels against God. He sees
these laws, so rather than submit himself to the righteousness
of Christ, he seeks his own way. Now, he seeks religious stuff,
but not true religion of the heart. Man-made religion is always
idolatry, because he'll worship anything and everything but Christ.
Look here at verse six. They helped everyone his neighbor,
and everyone said to his brother, be of good courage. So the carpenter
encouraged the goldsmith. He that smootheth with the hammer,
him that smote the anvil, saying, it's ready for the soldering.
And he fastened it with nails, that it should not be moved.
That's what the natural man does. Man-made religion, they encourage
one another. Now, they don't encourage one
another with the word of God. I truly pray that the Lord will
give me a message from his word that will encourage you. Not
because of me, not because some clever way, you know, I thought
to say things, but that you're encouraged from God's word. You
know, I don't get to listen to very much preaching anymore,
but I'm telling you Thursday night, Marvin Stonerker was here.
I left so encouraged. Oh, that's why I pray God will
give me a message, encourage you like that from his word.
But these idolaters, now they encourage one another, but they
don't use God's word to do it. They use their, you know, cute
little pep talks and cute little sayings and stuff to their own
thoughts and ideas trying to encourage one another. And they
watch the man making the idol, you know, and they say, boy,
that looks good. Isn't that, boy, look at that
craftsmanship. I mean, boy, that's something
else. I mean, look, he took that wood and he, boy, look at all
that gold he put on it. He put eyes, he got jewels and
made eyes out of it. Boy, the way he set that, doesn't
that look real? Oh, it's impressive. And just
how impressed you are with it, I reckon depends on how much
gold and silver and precious stones you can gather together.
And boy, they encourage him, that looks good. But you know
what the problem with that is? That idol's not real. There's
no life in that idol. He can't do anything. But that's
the way the natural man wants it. and that idol that's wood
and covered with gold. Now you, everybody here knows
that's a figment of man's imagination. Now, you know that, don't you?
Well, you know, this Jesus that people preach, they say, well,
now he died for everybody. He wants to save you if you'll
just let him, if you'll just make a decision for him, you
know, and the idolaters, that looks good. I like this, what
you got here. You know, that looks good to
me. This Jesus, wow. He's so loving, he can get along
with everybody. It doesn't matter what God's
word says. I heard, well, I don't know who
you were telling me the other day about, was it Jimmy Carter
or something saying he's just wild, crazy people? God loves
everybody. God loves them. Who was it that
said he loved? Tell me. Homosexuals. Didn't matter what God's Word
says about that. Jimmy Carter said, oh yeah, God loves sin.
Well, that just sounds so good. That Jesus wouldn't hurt a flea. You know why they love that?
That's what they want. Because they don't want a God
who's sovereign. They don't want the God who does
as he will, when he will, with whom he will. What they want
is a genie in a bottle. They can rub the bottle. They
can do some religious mumbo-jumbo to get the genie to come out
of the bottle when they're in trouble and need him. And the
rest of the time, they want him to stay in the bottle so he don't
bother them. That's what they want. Look at 1 Samuel 5. This is one trait that's true
of every idol. Every idol is dependent on man
in some way. You know, an idol is just a statue. That statue is to pin on a man
to put him where he's going to be, keep him propped up. 1 Samuel
5 verse 1. This is the Philistines came
and they had taken the ark of God, ark of the covenant. And
the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer
into Ashdod. When the Philistines took the
Ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon. This is their
idol. They had a nice house set up for Dagon. There he stood,
because that's where they put him. They brought the Ark of
God, the Ark of the Covenant, into the house of Dagon and set
it by Dagon. And when they of Ashdod arose
early on tomorrow, behold, Dagon was fallen on his face to the
earth before the Ark of the Lord. And they took Dagon and set him
in his place again. And when they arose early on
the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen on his face to the
ground before the ark of the Lord and the head of Dagon. And both the palms of his hand
were cut off upon the threshold. Only the stump of Dagon was left
to him." Now, everybody with the mind sees what's going on
here, but look what they did. Instead of saying, we're in trouble,
instead of seeking mercy, look, they came up with a religious
tradition. Therefore, neither the priests of Dagon, nor any
that come into Dagon's house, tread on the threshold of Dagon
and Ashdod unto this day." That's the real answer, and it will
just come with a new religious tradition. We won't step on the threshold,
you know, step on a crack and break your mother's back. Dagon
is an idol. He's got to be nailed in his
place. Looks to me like they better set him in concrete, because
he's going to fall over. Somebody else has got to prop
him up. And the Jesus that men preach today is no different.
He's gotta constantly be propped up by men. He can't do anything
on his own. I mean, he's just not able. You
better prop him up. You gotta decide on him. You
gotta put him in his place by your free will. He can't set
up residence in your heart. He can't take the throne of your
heart unless you let him. He's gotta be where you put him.
And you better constantly prop him up. Now that's not the Lord Jesus
Christ of this book. No, it's not. Whoever says that,
there's no light in them because they're not speaking according
to the scriptures. You don't let Christ, you don't let God's
son do anything. He does according to his will.
He wills it and it's done. And our only option is to beg
him for mercy. He doesn't need our permission
to do anything. Our only option is to fall at
his feet and beg for mercy. Now that's the way that the natural
man will go every time. Every time. That he'll always
do what's right in his own eyes. And whatever's right in our eyes
is wrong 100% of the time. If it's not for God's grace,
we'd be in the house of Dagon right now. And you know that's
so. And that strikes some fear in
the heart of even believers. One great fear that every believer
has is, will I go away? A great fear, will I depart from
the faith? I've told you this before, but
it bears repeating. Even in that, there's some comfort.
I was a young man. listening to some of these older
fellas talk. And they talked about a man,
I loved him. I loved this man. Went with him
preaching. Just enjoyed his preaching, enjoyed
his company so much. And he had completely left the
faith. Just gone off the deep end so
far. I mean, I just, I couldn't believe
it. I heard these men talking about
this man. And I kept quiet. I didn't, I just, I was shocked,
you know? Bob Coffey was one of the men
talking. I waited until the conversation wound up and I pulled Bob aside
and I asked him, I said, does that scare you to death? And
he said, yes, it does. He said, that's a sign of life.
That's a sign of spiritual life that that scares you to death.
The new man is scared to death what the old man will do. I depart
from the faith. Our Lord gathered his disciples
together and said, one of you is going to betray me. You're
going to betray me to the hands of these Jews. You're going to
betray me in the hands of these, these Roman soldiers to do with
me. They're going to beat me. They're
going to crucify me. They're going to kill me. And
it's one of you is going to betray me. Every one of them took me
and said, Lord, said I, their great fear was I could do that. I could do that. And that's a
legitimate fear. Because every one of us knows
that's exactly what we'll do if the Lord takes His hand off
of us for one second. I want to give you five words
of comfort. Went through all this to get right here. I want
to give you five words of comfort for God's elect. Every one of
these words of comfort stem from God's election of His people.
Word number one. God's elect will never leave
you. Never. Because He won't allow
it. He's going to give you a new
heart that won't want to. Look at verse eight. But thou
Israel are my servant, your Jacob, whom I've chosen, the seed of
Abraham, my friend, thou whom I have taken from the ends of
the earth and called thee from the chief men thereof and said
unto thee, thou art my servant. I have chosen thee and I have
not cast thee away. Now the natural man, He'll be
an idolater every time, but God's elect won't. And only for this
reason, God won't allow it. He said, I've called you Jacob. You're a son of Jacob. You're
a fallen son of Adam. Jacob's your name. You're a cheat.
You're a supplanter. You're no good. But I've chosen
you. I've chosen you anyway, and I've
given you a new name. I've given you the name Israel,
Prince with God. I didn't choose the best of the
world. I called you, Jacob. Jacob, I chose you. I chose you
instead of the chief man of the world. And he says here, I've
called thee from the chief man. What that means is I called you
instead of the chief man. I've called you instead of the
best. And I've called you by my gospel. And I've given you
faith. I've given you a new nature.
I've given you the nature of Christ. Look over at Galatians
chapter three. I've called you. You're my chosen
seed. You're the seed of Abraham, my
friend. Now let's look in Galatians chapter
three and see what that means. Does that mean all the natural
descendants of Abraham? No, it doesn't. Paul said, they're
not all Israel with our of Israel, are they? What's this seed referred
to? Galatians three, verse 16. Now
to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not
into seeds as of many, but as of one. and to thy seed, which
is Christ. Christ is the seed of God. All
of God's promises to his people are in the seed. They're in Christ.
All the promises of God to his people are secure because of
Christ, because they're based upon who Christ is and what he's
done for his people, not on what we do. See, that makes the promise
secure, doesn't it? Now the promise is secure. There's
no need for fear. because the promise of God has
been perfectly fulfilled by Christ our Savior. So look over at verse
26 of Galatians 3. For ye are all the children of
God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been
baptized into Christ have put on Christ. That doesn't mean
you've been baptized, dunked under the water in the waters
of baptism. That means you've been immersed into Christ. You've
been put into the body of Christ. You've put on him. There's neither
Jew nor Greek, there's neither bond nor free, there's neither
male nor female, there's none of these fleshly distinctions,
for you're all one in Christ Jesus. And if you be Christ,
if you belong to Christ, if you're in the body of Christ, if you
have faith in Christ, then are you Abraham's seed, and you're
heirs according to the promise. It's by faith, not by your natural
birth, by faith. Now, God says, I'll never leave
you. You're Abraham's seed. You're
the ones that I've chosen. You're the ones that I've called.
I've changed your name from Jacob to Israel. I have not cast thee
away. I never will. So you'll never
leave him either. Now don't fear. Fear not. If
God chose you and God called you, God's given you life in
the new birth. He will not cast you away. Despite
our sin and our weakness and our failure, He will not cast
you away. You won't leave Him. Here's a second word of comfort.
God's elect never have to fear being alone. Verse 10, fear thou
not, I'm with thee. I suppose one of the great fears
of most human beings is to be left alone. You know, everything's
just better when you've got somebody with you that loves you. Janet
told me the other day, I'm so glad we're going through this
life together. I'm so glad you're by my side. This is how it makes
such a difference. We fear being alone, don't we?
Believer, don't fear being alone. You'll never be alone. God's
always with you. Christ dwells in you. Where can
you go? He's not with you. He'll never
leave you nor forsake you. Yet in His flesh, we fear, don't
we? We fear being left alone by our spouse. You don't have
to worry about being divorced by Christ our husband. He's a
faithful husband. He'll never leave you nor forsake
you. You don't have to fear being left alone as a widow. Christ
is our husband who never dies. We fear when we're little, When
we're just real little, I think a fear of a child is to be orphaned. What happens when mom and dad
are around? And as you get a little older,
you still kind of fear that. You just don't matter how old
you get, mom's still mom, dad's still dad, you just don't want
to be left alone without them. It hurts. We fear being left
alone as an orphan. Who's going to teach us? Who's
going to take care of us? Who's going to love us? Look,
John chapter 14. I know I've told you this before,
Brother Henry's told you, but let's look at it again. We fear
being orphaned. David said in Psalm 27, verse
10, when my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will
take me up. He's not gonna leave me orphaned.
Look what our Lord says here, John 14, verse 18. I will not
leave you comfortless. I will come to you. You're not
gonna be alone. I will come to you. Now, if you look in your
center margin, that word comfortless means orphans. I will not leave
you orphans. I'm your eternal father. I won't
leave you alone. We fear being left alone by our
friends. All my friends are gonna leave
me. Christ is the friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
You're not left with nothing. You'll never be alone if you're
one of God's elect. Because Christ, our substitute,
took it for us. When he died on Calvary's tree,
the Father turned his back on him. And he suffered more alone
than any man has ever been. So his people, his elect, will
never be alone. You won't be alone. Now here's
the third word of comfort. The elect of God never have to
fear being dismayed. He said, fear not, I'm with thee,
be not dismayed for I am thy God. Now this word dismayed,
it means to look around and be bewildered to not know. And because you don't know what's
going on, you're scared. It means to look around and say,
what what's happening? Boy, I do that, I'm afraid I
do that almost every day. I watch the news or I see something
and I say, what on earth's going on? I ask Jan, would you come
here and look at this? What's going on? Well, we may wonder what God's
purpose is. If something happens, I may wonder,
what's God's purpose in this? I know he's got one. We wonder
what God's purpose is, but the elect of God never have to fear
the outcome, ever. Why not? God says, for I am thy
God. I'm your God. Our God works all
things after the counsel of his own will. Next time you ask yourself,
and I'm gonna try to remember this for myself, next time you
ask yourself, what's going on? Here's what's going on. God's
working all things after the counsel of his own will. That's
what's going on. That's what's happening. And
our God is God. He's too wise to make a mistake.
He's too loving to do anything harmful. This is what we know. All things work together for
good. To them that love God, to them who are the called, that's
one of the things he said back here, I chose you and I called
you. To them who are the called according to his purpose, all
things work together for good. The elect of God don't have to
fear being dismayed. Fourth, the elect of God never
have to fear our own weakness. He says, I will strengthen thee
Yea, I will help thee. Now we're so weak, aren't we?
Oh, so fickle. We're weak physically. We're
weak mentally. We're weak emotionally. We're
weak spiritually. Our faith is so weak, weak, weak,
weak, weak, weak. That's what you can, word you
can use to describe us. But the elect of God don't have
to fear our own weakness. Look in Ephesians chapter three.
Why don't we have to fear our weakness? Aren't we weak? Yeah,
we're weak. We don't fear our weakness because our God, the
God who has all strength, will strengthen us. And he's going
to strengthen us in the inner man. It's not going to be a strengthening
of the flesh, it's a strengthening of the inner man. Ephesians 3,
verse 16. This is Paul's prayer. That he
would grant you according to the riches of his glory, to be
strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man, that
Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. that ye, being rooted
and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints
what's the breadth, and the length, and the depth, and the height,
and the know, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge,
that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God. Now
unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we
ask or think. We're so weak we can't do anything,
but he's able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we
ask or think according to the power that work within us. Unto
him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages,
world without end. We don't have to fear our weakness.
Now, it's good to understand our weakness. It's very good.
It's good to understand our utter incapability in every area. Because
what did the Apostle Paul say? When I'm weak, then I'm strong. When I realize my weakness and
I depend completely upon God's grace, then I'm strong. We have
nothing to fear if we're dependent on God's grace. Apostle Paul
said, I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me,
through his strength, not mine. He said, I'll strengthen you
and I'll help you. Now this help is not God helping
those that help themselves. The best illustration I can think
of is help. What it means is I'm going to
do it for you. I've got a nephew, too. He was recently in my house,
and he was trying to open the door. He wanted to go from our
house, if you know where we live, to see the bridge. And he was
just going to go. But our door's pretty heavy.
It's kind of sticky. He couldn't open it by himself.
And I said, here, you want me to help you? And by that, what
I meant was this. Uncle Frank will open the door.
Now I'm gonna pick you up and carry you down there to the bridge.
That was help. I'm gonna do it for you. This
is the way I can keep you safe. That's how God helps his people. He said, you sit right here.
I'm gonna do it for you. I'm gonna send my son. He's gonna
work out your righteousness. He's going to be the sacrifice
for your sin. Put your sin away and you just
sit right there. Now I'm going to call you to
my foot and I'm going to be the one to carry you all the way
home. That's how God helps his people. Well, God's my helper. I have nothing to fear. And last. The elect of God never have to
fear falling away from Christ. Look at the end of verse 10 here.
Yea, I will uphold thee. with the right hand of my righteousness.
Now the elect of God will never fall away from Christ because
God holds his people with the right hand of his righteousness.
Well, who's that? That's Christ, isn't it? And
what did our Lord say? I give my sheep eternal life
and they shall never perish. Neither shall any man pluck them
out of my hand. No man's able to pluck them out
of my father's hand. He's greater than all. Now, I
believe I've got nothing to fear. If I'm held in the hand of almighty
God, I've got nothing to fear. We looked at this first a week
or two ago, maybe look here at verse 12 of Isaiah chapter 40.
This is the hand we're talking about. Who hath measured the
waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with a span,
and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure? Weighed
to mountains in scales and the hills in a balance. This hand
of God is greater than space. He measures it all out in the
span of his hand. You know, it took us nine years to fly a spaceship
to Pluto. God measures it out like that,
you know. Well, even bigger than that because it's the whole thing.
We think it's here at Pluto. God's, it's got all the galaxies. He measures it out in the span
of his hand. All the water of the globe, God can hold just,
you know, like that. You know, I can hold a few drops.
That's God's hand, all the water of the world, just a couple of
drops in God, the palm of his hand. If God's holding me in
that hand, he can arm me. Not one thing. Not one thing. Fear not. Fear not. There is no reason to fear because
of who our God is. He chose you. He called you. He wrought everything for you.
He'll strengthen you. He'll help you. He'll take you
all the way home. Let's bow in prayer. Our Father, we thank you for
these precious promises that we read in your word. How we thank you, how often you
tell us, fear not. We're ashamed to say how often
we are full of fear, the storm, It's dark, the clouds are dark,
the wind and waves seem so great to us and we're afraid. But how
we rest in your word, what comfort your people find in your word,
fear not. I'm your God. It's beyond the ability of our
human mind to comprehend that you have made us your people
and made yourself our God. Father, we're thankful. Now we
pray for the faith to not fear, but trust and rest in our Lord
Jesus Christ, who's done all things well for his people. Father,
bless your word, we pray, to the comfort, the hearts of your
people, especially to bring glory to the person of your son. For
it's in his name, for his sake, we pray.